Home

We would like to thank Rockwell Collins for their generous support of our course.

Are you interested in learning more about sponsoring Senior Design? Click here!

This course helps electrical engineering seniors make the transition into industry through self-chosen team projects. To do so, the course emulates the day-to-day life of a real engineering design environment creating what numerous students have called their favorite class. Students put together what they have learned, develop teamwork and leadership skills, and gain in-depth practical knowledge in a topic that excites them. Moreover, Senior Design Projects make a good addition to a resume. Many employers consider a good Senior Design Project to be just as valuable as internship experience.

Ingenuity Article: Both teams had high praise for the ECE 445 experience. "I felt that the class was a type of final exam for my education," said Willenborg. "It proves that I can do engineering. It's a hands-on test to see what you've learned here." Sengupta had a similar view: "The greatest thing about 445 is that it's all you. At the same time, the worst thing about 445 is that it's all you. This class relies on your ability to have self-discipline, motivation, and endurance."

We would also like to thank Northrop Grumman for their generous sponsorship of our course. Please visit the Sponsors link to learn more about all of the great companies that help make this course possible

Non-ECE 445 Students

Smart Frisbee

Ryan Moser, Blake Yerkes, James Younce

Featured Project

The idea of this project would be to improve upon the 395 project ‘Smart Frisbee’ done by a group that included James Younce. The improvements would be to create a wristband with low power / short range RF capabilities that would be able to transmit a user ID to the frisbee, allowing the frisbee to know what player is holding it. Furthermore, the PCB from the 395 course would be used as a point of reference, but significantly redesigned in order to introduce the transceiver, a high accuracy GPS module, and any other parts that could be modified to decrease power consumption. The frisbee’s current sensors are a GPS module, and an MPU 6050, which houses an accelerometer and gyroscope.

The software of the system on the frisbee would be redesigned and optimized to record various statistics as well as improve gameplay tracking features for teams and individual players. These statistics could be player specific events such as the number of throws, number of catches, longest throw, fastest throw, most goals, etc.

The new hardware would improve the frisbee’s ability to properly moderate gameplay and improve “housekeeping”, such as ensuring that an interception by the other team in the end zone would not be counted as a score. Further improvements would be seen on the software side, as the frisbee in it’s current iteration will score as long as the frisbee was thrown over the endzone, and the only way to eliminate false goals is to press a button within a 10 second window after the goal.